:00:00. > :00:12.Time now for Meet The Author. Luke Brown and Antonio Hodgson
:00:13. > :00:22.first`time novelists. Hodgson's book is an 18th`century...
:00:23. > :00:27.Luke Brown's My Biggest Lie is a funny portrait of the publishing
:00:28. > :00:35.industry. Two different books, but they have something in common, they
:00:36. > :00:36.are both publishing editors. `` of their authors are both publishing
:00:37. > :00:56.editors. This book is set in the 18th`century
:00:57. > :01:01.prison, a grim place. For those who don't know, give us a brief
:01:02. > :01:06.description. This is a place that people went when they had no money
:01:07. > :01:12.which happened a lot here. It is just after the great financial
:01:13. > :01:16.collapse. People were thrown into this prison that was run for profit.
:01:17. > :01:19.There is a weird situation where although you have no money, you're
:01:20. > :01:29.still bled dry by the keeper who would charge you for everything. At
:01:30. > :01:35.the same time, on one half of the prison, it was reasonably
:01:36. > :01:40.comfortable. On the other side, it was where people really were in
:01:41. > :01:45.trouble, they were starving and dying. They carried the bodies out
:01:46. > :01:53.every morning. Seven or eight and light. The trick was to stay on the
:01:54. > :01:56.right side of the wall. This is based on facts. Several of the
:01:57. > :02:01.characters in the book were historical figures. Absolutely. The
:02:02. > :02:06.keeper at the time was later put on trial for murder for the brutal
:02:07. > :02:15.treatment of the prisoners. This is a sort of, to use a technical term,
:02:16. > :02:24.Schaller makes. It is a whodunnit and historical accounts. I love the
:02:25. > :02:29.idea of having a murder mystery in a prison. The sense of claustrophobic
:02:30. > :02:34.and having to solve the murder before he was the next victim. I
:02:35. > :02:39.thought it had its own innate tension. Luke, yours is based on
:02:40. > :02:43.fact, too, it is a satire on the publishing industry. There is a
:02:44. > :02:48.hero, not unlike yourself, I suspect. He goes to Buena 's errors,
:02:49. > :03:00.why? It begins with him being drummed out
:03:01. > :03:03.of the publishing industry after being dumped by his girlfriend. He
:03:04. > :03:11.holds itself responsible for the death of his kind of father figure,
:03:12. > :03:15.a Booker prize`winning novelist. To get over his shame and to try and
:03:16. > :03:19.redeem himself and live life more truthfully, a lot of those problems
:03:20. > :03:32.come from the fact he's a liar and storyteller, he flies to Buena
:03:33. > :03:41.Cyrus, there's an irony that as Buenos Aies is one of the... One of
:03:42. > :03:44.the things that strikes you is his absolutely enormous consumption of
:03:45. > :03:51.alcohol and illegal drugs and equally enormous consumption by
:03:52. > :03:56.people around him. If the publishing industry really like that? May be on
:03:57. > :04:01.the fringes. Most of the publishing industry are people working hard in
:04:02. > :04:11.the office. But the world of publishing he works in, he has a
:04:12. > :04:15.very bad role model, his boss. He takes a lot of drugs, he is known
:04:16. > :04:20.for publishing notorious authors, the rock stars and the film stars,
:04:21. > :04:31.so his mythology of being this had a nest is very helpful for him as. ``
:04:32. > :04:37.hedonist. People will look at this and save ER real characters. They
:04:38. > :04:42.are just thinly disguise. Not at all. I have borrowed details from
:04:43. > :04:49.myself and details from archetypes, the salesman editor or the drunk,
:04:50. > :04:52.but ultimately it is an amalgamation of different characteristics. My
:04:53. > :04:56.friends are still queueing up to play themselves in the book. You
:04:57. > :05:06.were until recently a publishing editor. And you still are editor in
:05:07. > :05:16.chief at Little Brown. There is a line in Luke 's book, a few things
:05:17. > :05:22.less dignified than adept who rates. `` and editor rights.
:05:23. > :05:33.That question is always hard to and so. You just wants to write. You
:05:34. > :05:38.just do it. There is no, for me, anyway, thinking that I would quite
:05:39. > :05:44.like to write a novel one day. It is always something I wanted to do. I
:05:45. > :05:48.always told myself stories. Really, it was a question about discipline.
:05:49. > :05:54.So was getting a job in the brushing her displacement, the nearest you
:05:55. > :05:59.could get to the right? Iraq I don't think so, I realised early that I
:06:00. > :06:04.was rubbish at everything. I was good at reading, writing and talking
:06:05. > :06:10.about books. Everything else, I was hopeless at. There was no choice in
:06:11. > :06:15.the matter. Does your experience of being in editor and publisher,
:06:16. > :06:21.hasn't made it easier for you? In some ways. I think it has helped me
:06:22. > :06:25.get over some anxieties. I can recognise the hot points, the places
:06:26. > :06:28.where for instance after you finish the book, but before it comes out,
:06:29. > :06:34.where there is nothing you can do and all you can do is wait to get
:06:35. > :06:38.the response from readers. It is a very, very emotional scary time.
:06:39. > :06:42.Although it didn't stop me feeling those things, I could recognise them
:06:43. > :06:48.and think that is a funny period. I could tell myself to calm down.
:06:49. > :06:54.Luke, is it something you had always wanted to do? To become a publisher
:06:55. > :07:02.to become a writer? No, but it was borne out of the same impulse. I was
:07:03. > :07:06.reading and writing, I've always read a lot and I am interested in
:07:07. > :07:11.style. They were born from the same impulse, I think. I am not sure I
:07:12. > :07:16.would not have been a better editor if I did not write, I may have read
:07:17. > :07:21.more, but as a writer it gives you a creative route into the novel, as
:07:22. > :07:27.well, and allows you to look at things in structural ways.
:07:28. > :07:41.Thank you both. Good evening. Today, we managed to
:07:42. > :07:46.get up to 19 Celsius in the south`east corner. There's cold air
:07:47. > :07:50.coming down from the North, coming behind this belt of cloud. It
:07:51. > :07:55.brought a change to the weather. Still thick enough, it gave us one
:07:56. > :07:57.or two hit and miss showers. Many places becoming dry and the cloud
:07:58. > :07:58.retreats